Obama in Wonderland with the Oil Spill Commission

In its lead editorial yesterday, The Wall Street Journal pointed out the lack of scientific and engineering expertise of President Obama’s appointments to the seven-member “National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling,” as well as the obvious biases of a majority of its members who have either stated publicly their opposition to drilling or are members of organizations that oppose offshore drilling. There is only one member with any engineering background at all, although her specialties are physics and optics.

Of course, it is hard to see how an expertise in optics is relevant to the complex engineering of oil exploration and drilling in the deep ocean, although the President has certainly shown an extraordinary obsession with the political optics of his administration’s handling of this environmental and economic disaster. The Commission is chaired by former Democratic Senator Bob Graham, “who fought drilling off Florida throughout his career.” His co-chairman is Republican William Reilly, the former president and chairman of the World Wildlife Fund, which brags on its website that “WWF helped to lead the successful effort to secure a moratorium on offshore oil and gas development in the Arctic.”

It is not too difficult to predict what the Commission’s recommendations will be on, as the White House press release on the formation of the Commission said, “how we can prevent – and mitigate the impact of – any future spills that result from offshore drilling.” Does anyone expect this Commission to recommend anything other than either a permanent ban on offshore drilling or onerous regulations so burdensome and expensive that they will achieve the equivalent of a ban?

As we reported yesterday in The Foundry, a federal court in Louisiana overturned the Obama administration’s six-month blanket moratorium on all deep-water drilling. There is one interesting fact about that case that is relevant to The Wall Street Journal editorial about the biases of the members of the Commission. One of the individuals President Obama appointed is Frances G. Beinecke, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a very liberal environmental advocacy organization. Beinecke has called for bans on offshore drilling on numerous occasions. But he has not just talked about such a ban – the NRDC actually intervened as a defendant in this lawsuit, arguing in favor of the drilling moratorium.

Beinecke has a glaring conflict of interest that prevents him from serving on this Commission with any level of objectivity, yet I have no doubt that the administration will ignore that conflict. He will continue to serve on the Commission so that the President and his radical environmental allies can guarantee the results they want from the Commission just like the Queen of Hearts told Alice: sentence first – verdict afterwards.

Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and government reform—as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and manager of the think tank’s Election Law Reform Initiative. Read his research.

Once again, the author does not recognize that Obama is NOT 'in Wonderland", inexperienced, or incompetent. He is deliberate and devious in every word and action to complete the "tranformation" of the country. This commission is just the latest proof. Does HF feel that it's an accident that every one of Obama choices is a radical leftist who have voiced their distain for all fossil fuels use?

I have personally crossed swords with the NRDC and their president Beinecke. I can assure everyone, this groups (many are attonneys) and Beinecke is beyond radical left, boarding on Communism and anarchism. This group uses deception and lies to collect funds to support their agenda, which just happens to be the same as Obama's

Does the Heritage Foundation believe the Progressives, Marxist, and Communist picked Obama for president because he is stupid and lives in a "Wonderland? We all had better wake up to the truth before it's too late.

There is the one expert, and that is with optics, well guess someone may find optics usefull as the try to get obama to remove his head from his butt. Would be nice to find it. The oil spill is a mess, but new regulations, taxes and laws are not the answer, neither is a ban on drilling. Then it is like all dems are prone to say, let not disaster go to waste, make political hay with it, can anyone sat "cap and trade".

With the White House refusal of immediate help from other countries and the majority of our own oil skimmers still in storage, what else can be deduced but that Obama has not responded quickly to this disaster on purpose, to further support his agenda against all fossil fuel.

I think Obama is a devious snake-oil salesmen as much as the next guy, but lets get the facts straight here: The investigative panel is NOT charged with determining WHETHER offshore oil development can be conducted safely; rather, its mission is to show HOW it can resume with greater safeguards. This is not about new or restrictive engineering feats, this is about figuring out a way to actually enforce the regulations and oversight that the Department of Interior (MMS) is charged with, so that this tragedy doesn't happen again.

Sidenote: I'm sure the rest of us non-bleeding heart liberals would be happy to know that Mr. Reilly, the co-chairman of the panel, was on the Board of ConocoPhillips. Certainly not a technical expert, but entrenched enough to make sure we can all count on continued drilling to fuel our SUVs to tow the boats we don't have up the mountains we don't live near.

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